3 Weeks After Shootings, Students Return

Published: April 12, 2005

Students returned to Red Lake High School on Monday for the first time since a teenage gunman killed five fellow students, a teacher, a security guard and himself there three weeks ago.

A healing ceremony was held outside the school, on the Red Lake Indian Reservation, before students and parents entered.

Inside, students cleared out their lockers, which are all in the newer section of the school, where the shootings occurred. That section will be closed for renovations, while high school classes are to resume on Tuesday in an older part of the school that had been scheduled to be demolished.

Students will also begin using a different school entrance, away from the main doors, which the gunman walked through.

Reporters were kept out of sight of the healing ceremony and were not allowed in the school.

On March 21, Jeff Weise, 16, shot his grandfather and his grandfather's companion, then went to the school and killed seven people there before shooting himself. The slain security guard was not armed.

An open house was held under tight security on Monday at the adjacent middle school. Across town, classes resumed at the elementary school.

Arleda Scott, 14, who was at the middle school on Monday, said that a few of her classmates were not ready to return. ''Some of them are scared,'' she said.

Ms. Scott's mother, Michelle Johnson, said it was time for students to return to school. ''This is a good place for students, for kids to be,'' said Ms. Johnson, who went back to the school with Arleda and another daughter, Anita Scott.

School officials said last week that tightened security would include locked classrooms while school was in session and patrols of hallways by officers of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Photo: Anita Scott, left, and her mother, Michelle Johnson, at Red Lake High School in Minnesota yesterday. (Photo by Jim Mone/Associated Press)